Was Formula E's debut a success?

No one likes to see accidents. Certainly not when a car becomes airborne. Yet the last-corner clash between Nick Heidfeld and Nicolas Prost undoubtedly did Formula E a favour.

There was certainly a lot of media interest in the inaugural event of the new FIA Formula E Championship in Beijing. Amazingly The Daily Telegraph was represented by two journos in China, one local and one lifestyle. But the race wouldn't have got the coverage it did without pictures of a car flying through the air being beamed around the world.

The accident, as chilling as it was, reinforced for me - and I'm sure everyone else, whether they were present or watching on TV - that Formula E is a real racing series. I certainly wasn't thinking about electric powerplants, energy limits, FanBoost and the like as Heidfeld looked down the inside of the leader into the final corner.

But then they'd only been in the back of my mind during the previous 24.9 laps of a race held in the shadow of Beijing's Bird's Nest Olympic stadium. I was there, lap chart on the go, reporting on a major international event. It just happened to be a pioneering event as the first-ever, all-electric single-seater motor race.

That proved to me that Formula E is a category worthy of its place on the international calendar. A grid-full of Spark-Renault SRT_01Es created a spectacle that made me more or less forget that it's a racing machine that is anathema to everything that has gone before in the history of motorsport. That was the biggest success of the Beijing ePrix to my mind.

The crash between Prost and Heidfeld did Formula E a favour

Technology in motorsport is forever changing. In my time, thanks to my role as AUTOSPORT's man in the sportscar paddocks of the world, I've seen a lot of new technologies introduced to motor racing. I'm thinking, here, direct-injection engines, turbodiesel power and now hybrids of ever-increasing complexity and capacity.

Those innovations have given me a lot to write about down the years, but they haven't been to the detriment of our sport. I can now say that the same goes for all-electric racing. It doesn't matter that the races are fought out by machinery propelled by something other than the internal combustion engine.

Formula E is the latest manifestation of a process that began in the late 1990s. In the intervening years, motorsport has re-found its place as both a proving ground for new automotive technologies and a way of marketing the latest innovations to the car-buying public.

Audi's campaigns with its line of diesel-powered LMP1 prototypes has helped changed attitudes to what, thanks in part to a run of victories in the Le Mans 24 Hours, we no longer call oil-burners. Formula E can play a role in making electric vehicles more desirable and, once the regulations open up for season two, driving EV technology forward.

I boarded my flight to Beijing intrigued rather than excited by the prospect of 20 electric cars - 40 in total, but 20 at any one time - whirring around the Chinese streets. I checked in on the way home believing that it can deliver on its promise to bring exciting zero-emissions racing to the city centres of the world.

The significance of the series will only grow in the coming years. In season two, the plan is for motor supply to be opened up, with batteries becoming free the season after in 2016/17.

That raises the prospect of manufacturer involvement, which can only be good news for Formula E.

Renault (which is both a technical partner of the series and a sponsor of the e.dams squad) and Indian manufacturer Mahindra (whose Formula E entry is run by the British Carlin team) have both expressed an interest in producing their own powertrains in the future.

Audi also has an involvement through its support of the Abt team, while BMW has admitted that its deal to supply course vehicles to the series is a statement of its interest in Formula E.

The first ever Formula E podium

The arrival of new suppliers, whether they are manufacturers or not, will also boost the appeal of Formula E for me. I'm no fan of one-make motorsport, as a rule.

There is a caveat to my enthusiasm for Formula E. During a race that I enjoyed so much, I was hunkered down in a press room with no view of the circuit, as is so often the case these days.

I, like you, got to watch the race on a TV screen, but unlike you (probably) the sound was turned down. The Chinese commentary, to be honest, was going to be of no use to me.

Part of the attraction of motorsport for me has always been the noise. The aural assault on the senses was one of the reasons I was hooked after my first visit to a motor race at Brands Hatch on Boxing Day in 1977.

I could live with the introduction of whispering turbodiesels in LMP1. That's partly because they have a noise of their own (I'm thinking of the tat-tat-tat of their splitters on the approach to corners like Becketts at Silverstone) and partly because they have always been part of a grid of cars with a wide array of engine notes.

I took a couple of trips out to watch the Spark-Renaults during the two practice sessions in Beijing on Saturday, and it didn't get my juices flowing. The fact that the Formula E cars aren't quick had something to do with it, as did the fact that the Beijing Olympic Park track is neither a great circuit nor a good venue for spectating. But the lack of noise got to me, as did the awful ambient music played out a high volume over the PA system.

That said, I was generally watching one car at a time. Whether I'd have been more enthused had I been in a grandstand during the race, I can't say.

Maybe I need to go to a Formula E event as a spectator to truly make up my mind. We're sharing out the Formula E races between us at AUTOSPORT this season, so I don't know whether I'll be reporting on the London finale next summer.

I'm going to be there anyway, whether it's in Battersea Park or at the ExCeL exhibition centre; the chance to witness motor racing near the heart of my home city is something I am not going to miss.

Maybe then I'll know if Formula E satisfies me as a motor racing fan in the same way it does as a journalist.